L-39 doing circuits at YBW Sept 18, 2017

[David MacRay]

I went to the Calgary Flying club today and when I was leaving I saw an L-39 taking off. I watched it seem to turn as if it was doing circuits. I kept watching and it was.

Then I wandered over to the fench to watch it do a touch and go. Then a fellow sitting in his car with a hand held radio, watching planes told me it was going to do three more touch and goes.

Sure enough they flew some circuits, did some over head breaks and three more touch and goes before landing.

That was definately nice timing. I enjoyed watching them.

[Colonel]

Gotta watch the brakes heating up, doing that.

There is a limit in the manual as to the number of
landings you can do per unit time - I forget the
exact number of the top of my head.

[David MacRay]

I kind of hope they knew about that, the runway they were using is fairly long, if that helps.

[color=blue]Edit: I am feeling remorse for writing that ^ a longer ground roll is possibly worse. Still with lots of runway my theory was they did not need to use the brakes.
Also, I looked it up it's 5000' maybe that is not long for an L-39.
I don't know.[/color]

I did not count them but there were several light singles in the circuit so the L-39 was not doing touch and goes one after another.

I did not time the whole thing, it was rather interesting to watch so it seemed like a fairly short time but was probably somewhere around 45 minutes total maybe longer.

The guy with the hand held said he had never seen the plane before, I agreed and said the only time I had seen any sort of jet there, was for a couple times there was air shows there around 1996.

[Chris]

[color=rgb(119, 119, 119)][font=Verdana][size=22px]Sept 18, 2027[/size][/font][/color]


The new time travelling model?

[David MacRay]

Nice! I guess I should fix that. Who knew they went so fast?

I think I almost made it 2007 before that error.

[ScudRunner-d95]

I was coming back from the rifle range and saw it crank over head the highway. I should have stopped in and kicked some tires !

[Colonel]

[quote]5000' maybe that is not long for an L-39[/quote]

At sea level and if you're light, it's plenty.  At higher density
altitude and if you're heavy, you might need more braking,
especially if you come in a little faster on final than you
really need to.  Pilots love to do that - it makes them feel
safe - but they're screwing themselves.

It's all about your speed over the numbers.  Kinetic energy
is a function of velocity [b]squared[/b], after all.

[John Swallow]

Andrew's right.  The L-39 seems to be a lot like the T-33.  And the T-Bird would be quite happy off of 4000 feet.  Less if you wanted to go with internal fuel only.

[David MacRay]

I'm heavy.  :(

[Colonel]

Like the T-33, 125 knots on short final is recommended for the L39
in the flight manual.

With a bit of practice, you can slow the L39 to 115 knots (my preference)
just before threshold crossing, but it generally takes some encouragement
to make pilots do that.  Some practice will usually be required before pilots
get the hang of the throttle lag, and they are able to precisely control speed
on final to within a couple knots.